1. Technical Field
This device relates to a press used in repairing the damaged portions of a wooden pallet or skid.
Wooden pallets are used to transport a variety of bulk goods and equipment as required in manufacturing and warehousing operations. Wooden pallets are subject to damage in use that occurs from handling with forklifts or the like equipment. Since such pallets are in wide use a large number of damaged and unusable pallets must be repaired or discarded daily. Repair of damaged pallets has become an increasingly sound alternative to disposal due to the sheer volume of pallets that require repair each day. In the repair process damaged portions of the pallets are replaced in a repair station in a multiple conveyor line to facilitate the volume of movement required. As the repairs are made, typically some of the nails used are not driven flush due to existing obstructions, such as original construction nails or wood irregularities. Thus, random upstanding nails if not corrected will damage goods and equipment when in use. Accordingly, it has heretofore been required that a manual inspection be made of each repaired pallet and the upstanding nails be driven down or over by hand or rolling press reducing the efficiency and effectiveness in volume of the pallet repair operation. It would be desirable to have a fully automated high volume pallet nail press to provide a one-stop nail driver which does not require the time consuming visual inspection and manual nail driving hereinbefore required.
It is an object of this invention, therefore, to address this issue and to provide a self-contained automatic pallet nail press which will selectively position a pallet within the press, drive simultaneously whatever nails are upstanding and then exit the press all in an automated operation.
2. Description of Prior Art
Prior art devices of this type do not exist in this specific field. Repair pallet presses have heretofore been used to secure reinforcing nailer plates onto damaged pallet stringers by applying the plates in overlay relation on opposing sides of a damaged portion, see for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,823,861. This patent discloses a pivoted arm that is moved towards and away from an opposing pallet, driving simultaneously oppositely disposed reinforcing nailing plates into the damaged stringer.
A nail rolling apparatus is known to exist as illustrated in a pending Australian patent application which utilizes a series of vertically spaced opposing sets of rollers in which one roller set is movably adjusted for pallet height and rolls over the upstanding nails flattening same.
Analogous fluid driven pneumatic presses are known to use inflatable actuator bags that drive a movable plate forward against a fixed base plate, see for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,376,808.